Transgender persons and transsexuals.
2017: Why are
some people transgender?

Part 7 of nine parts.

Banner at a university protest by TFP Student Action

Webmaster's comment about the above image: [bias alert]

The banner created by TFP Student Action is intended to attack the transgender community, and to show that their beliefs are incompatible with a verse in the biblical book of Genesis. However, the banner can be interpreted very differently. Many transgender individuals will explain their situation as having a female brain trapped in a male body, or vice versa. Many might agree that Genesis 5:2 is literally true: God created each of them with a male body, male sex chromosomes in every cell in their body, female structures in their brain, and female responses by their brain. That is, God created them male and female!

"The truth cuts through error like a sharp sword. These twelve Catholic cardinals and bishops have spoken out against gender theory, clearing the toxic fog spread by the transgender movement and its biology deniers. In clear terms these prelates call gender theory what it really is: destructive, anti-reason, neo-Marxist, tyrannical, a form of spiritual terrorism, and demonic.

Please share these quotes."

Most Rev. James D. Conley, Bishop of Lincoln, Nebraska

"We are living in a time when ordinary human reason is quickly being replaced by 'the barren thorns of passion.' Our entire culture has been caught up in a kind of sentimentalized and relativized tyranny of tolerance: we vilify and condemn, ever more quickly, any sense of reasonable and ordered social policy. We have a vague sense that endorsing certain fashionable kinds of social and emotional disorders — including transgenderism [sic] — is a mandate of justice, or a victory for civil rights. ..."

"But the Church will not deny that God created us male and female. We will not confuse respect and compassion with capitulation to a tragic delusion. Our Catholic schools will continue to teach and live the truth, because of our care for every student. We can only help students grow in holiness when we help them to live in accord with the truth. We will continue to do that, no matter the cost."

Cardinal Robert Sarah, Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments:

"[In France] they corrected me, they said I cannot use the word ‘deviation’, but I would not know which other word to use [about gender theory]. ... Even fools recognize that, between a man and a woman, there is a difference and a complementarity. Man is nothing without a woman and vice versa. This is not my own position, this is the position of the Church, and all Christians, all families are called to fight against this deviation."

Cardinal Raymond Burke, Patron of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta:

"Gender theory is an invention, an artificial creation. It is impossible to have an identity that does not respect the proper nature of man and that of woman. It is madness that will cause immense damage in society and in the lives of those who support this theory. With gender theory, it is impossible to live in society. Already today, in certain places in the United States, anyone at all can change identity and say, 'Today I am a man; tomorrow I will be a woman.' That is truly madness. Some men insist on going into the women’s rest rooms. That is inhuman. In the schools, you can imagine the confusion. ... Nowadays there is enormous confusion, which is based on the false idea that there are practically an infinite number of possible sexual orientations. The twofold expression of the human person is not heterosexuality and homosexuality, but male and female. This is the authentic theology of anthropology: that God created man: 'male and female he created them.',"

Cardinal Rubén Salazar Gómez,
Archbishop of Bogota, Colombia:

"We reject the implementation of gender ideology in the Colombian education, because it’s a destructive ideology, [it] destroys the human being, taking away its fundamental principle of the complementary relationship between man and woman. ... Individual rights can’t go against the rights of the community. ... [we must] proclaim the family as the cell of social life."

"The future of humanity is played in marriage and the natural family is formed by a heterosexual couple. ... The proliferation of the mentality of gender ideology ... denies the natural reciprocity between a man and a woman."

Most Rev. Demeterio Fernández González, Bishop of Cordoba, Spain:

"[G]ender ideology is an atomic bomb that wants to destroy Catholic doctrine, the image of God in man, and the image of God the Creator."

Most Rev. Rudolf Voderholzer, Bishop of Regensburg, Germany:

"Gender theoreticians use the equality issues in order to introduce in society a notion of man that goes far beyond specific concerns of equality and, finally, paradoxically, leads to the dissolution of that which ought to be protected, specifically the intrinsic value of male and female existence. The gender theory implies a denial of the nature of man and woman and, hence, also the exclusion of the belief in God, the good Creator. ... The essence of man and woman is the potential to become a father and the potential to become a mother, respectively. These are not exchangeable roles, but, rather, gifts from the Creator, and, in the last instance, a calling ... gender theory [is] an ideology that completely opposes reality and the integrity of human nature."

Most Rev. Thomas Paprocki, Bishop of Springfield, Illinois:

"The transgender activists would have you believe that their politically correct ideology is based on science; however, the American College of Pediatricians has pointed out that transgenderism [sic] is classified as a mental illness and therefore has warned legislators and educators that conditioning children to accept transgenderism [sic] as normal is child abuse. They advised, 'When an otherwise healthy biological boy believes he is a girl, or an otherwise healthy biological girl believes she is a boy, an objective psychological problem exists that lies in the mind, not the body, and it should be treated as such."

"... People who are confused about their gender identity — especially children and adolescents — should be treated with compassion and provided counseling rather than being further confused by activists promoting their political ideology."

Webmaster's note:

The American College of Pediatricians (ACP) is a tiny group with about 200 members that takes many conservative positions, including opposition to same-sex couple adoption, same-sex parenting generally, abortion access, and comprehensive sex education in schools. They have been described as an anti-LGBT hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. They are often confused with the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) which has over 60,000 members. 2

"What is at stake [in the fight against gender theory] is the very order of creation. ..."

"The primordial divine plan was spoken of clearly by Christ himself: 'Have you not read that he who made them from the beginning made them male and female?' (Matthew 19:4). At the core we see the father and the mother, a couple with their personal story of love: 'Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife, and they shall become one flesh' (Genesis 2:24). The result of this union is that, both physically and in the union of their hearts and lives, and eventually, in a child who will share not only genetically but also spiritually in the 'flesh' of both parents. The family is thus the place where parents become their children’s first teachers."

Most Rev. Thomas J. Tobin,
Bishop of Providence, Rhode Island:

"I go back to the very basics and in the book of Genesis we read, 'God created the human family.' Male and female, he created them. There was no third option."